Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦

Academic freedom does not include not doing your job

As the midterms approach, I would just remind everyone that US politics has become increasingly parliamentary and that what matters most is the *number* of Ds or Rs, not the idiosyncrasies or ideological quirks of individual candidates. If you want D outcomes, vote D up & down the ticket.

My calendar (and recent letter of rec writing spree) reminds me it is that time of year to wish for violent death to happen to programs that require those stupid fucking rankings. Those programs that have eliminated them are doing the lords work.

Jim Balsillie: ".... Foundational IP for AI that Canadian taxpayers funded for two decades is transferred from U of T to Google, who thanked Canada for it and said, 'We now use it throughout our entire business and it’s a major driver of our corporate success.'” sencanada.ca/Content/SEN/...

Thread. This speaks to Canada's generous contributions to R&D across academia (science/eng/tech) and initial efforts to commercialize. The outcome is often sold to highest foreign bidders without recompense to Canadian taxpayers or discount to Canadian consumers. i.e., Jim Balsillie in 2023 .... 1/2

What makes this drug particularly extortionate, is the many years of federally funded research into Ras on which it builds. It’s a major feat to bring it through clinical trials but they’re pricing at “what the “market” can bear” rather than reasonable cost to bring to patients.

I wonder what situation we’d be in now if we hadn’t privatized Connaught Laboratories en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaug...

It is bleakly funny that our paper has kicked off impassioned nativist-empiricist wrangling over the meaning of its results for these entrenched sides. A big part of the message was that these a priori theoretical commitments distort interpretation of results and lead us down the garden path.

So I think the sneakier rhetorical purpose of such claims is activating worry. The very fact of not having immediately seen it as a sin against the Folk Ways of Noble Savage Pickup Truck Enthusiast to insult Cheesecake Factory's aesthetic will activate the worry this is proof they're out of touch.

That said, it's an interesting fact that you can often extract significant concessions from a certain kinda leftist by activating their insecurity that the True Volk are exurban petit bourgeois reactionaries, and you are intrinsically inauthentic if you're not in this group.

Tbh I don't think anyone on earth is offended by Obama saying that a gold plated cheesecake factory would be tacky. This is not actually something anyone is bothered by.

The pleasant escapist fantasy of a mad king who is capable of experiencing guilt.

Taking a break from the world of a criminal tyrant driven insane by his corrupt lust for power to instead attend our community theater production of Macbeth.

The 5-year cancer survival rate is up to 70% SIDS deaths have decreased by over 50% 89% decline in tornado deaths All thanks to federal investment in science and OUR tax dollars at work!

This is shockingly lazy work, making irresponsibly broad claims, by an author who is deeply entangled with the tech industry. Just because you *can* treat LLMs like a crystal ball, doesn't mean this counts as science.

tbh i had no idea we had metrics to evaluate peer review. if we knew what it should be like, we'd have already done a better job at it. but i have faith we can goodhart our way out of every problem, with or without ai.

“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory” — Obama

"There is no shortage of nurses...there is a shortage of nurses that want to work in the current environment." Nurses are in high demand, but leaving in droves because of understaffing and violence, by @tepingchen.bsky.social www.wsj.com/health/healt... via @wsj.com

tag yourself

Yglesias making a strong argument against all human progress ever here.

Comparison of AI reviews to human reviews was performed by a different AI.

Gee, being able to dissect the consensus from a wide array of opinions and considering that a perfect means to identify the most promising research would be a great way to squeeze out all creativity, risk and sheer individualist expression from scientific assessment.

This is evil and gross and stupid and cruel. It won’t work but a lot of dogs will suffer in the attempt. 😡

every now & then someone on the anti-trans side will get cold feet about how openly ugly it's all getting—they want to keep the image of a nice, sensible centrist but it's never enough for them to get off the train

Yes, this was my read too, I think you've got it exactly. Tailor-made to flatter and siphon money from the idiots. And yes, they're horrible people too.